Design Discourse - Composing and Revising Programs in Professional and Technical Writing, 2010a

The Great Instauration
“The proceeding upon somewhat conceived in writing doth for the most part facilitate
dispatch; for though it should be wholly rejected, yet that negative is more pregnant of
direction than an indefinite, as ashes are more generative than dust.” (135)
Sir Francis Bacon, “Of Dispatch” from The Essays (1625)
• Compost your failures to fertilize future projects. Recycle rejected courses
as special seminars. Transplant background material from an aborted proposal
into a program report. Boilerplate unread course descriptions when
submitting a catalog copy. Waste nothing.
“Just as some putrid substances like musk or civet yield the best scent, so base and sordid
details sometimes provide excellent light and information.” (122)
Sir Francis Bacon, Book One, Aphorism 120, The New Organon (1620)
• Even when things stink, welcome confusion and disappointment. If you
can bear the temporary din of frustration, your program’s elements eventually
will harmonize. In science as in music, Bacon said, dissonance is
necessary to fine-tune an instrument.
A Baconian approach to curricular design and implementation offers three distinct
advantages to emerging PTW programs at small liberal arts colleges. First,
Bacon’s educational principles and practices make a convincing apologia for
most English departments and writing programs. The Lord Chancellor is the
best lawyer to plead your case because he appeals to so many different audiences.
Traditional humanists will be pleased to see how Bacon’s ideas about professional
and technical writing fit historically within their own disciplines. Theorists and
New Historians will respect his materialism and praxis, while department chairs
and program directors will appreciate his shrewdness and practicality.
Second, Bacon’s pragmatism and social conscience wed humanistic education
to public policy and public works. As both a legislator and a jurist, James
Spedding observes, Bacon “could imagine like a poet and execute like a clerk of
works,” qualities that will appeal beyond a department’s curriculum committee
and will engage college administrators and representatives from research and
industry (72). Bacon was committed to achieving concrete results in the real
world. His summum bonum was the social good. Indeed, as J. G. Crowther ex-
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